SciLifeLab signs Memorandum of Understanding

News

2018-01-31

The SciLifeLab Director and the European Lead Factory executives of the European Screening Centre and the Public Chemistry Consortium have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for collaboration in future initiatives.

Sweden-based SciLifeLab (Science for Life Laboratory) and European Lead Factory (ELF) share a deep interest in the discovery and development of small molecule therapy and serving the needs of basic, applied and pharmaceutical-directing research. In this Memorandum of Understanding the parties declare to exploit the complementarity and synergistic potential between their activities. For example, the assay development and early drug discovery expertise at SciLifeLab complements the high-capacity screening capability of ELF. The scenario of SciLifeLab identifying and supporting users and projects with potential to be transferred to the large-scale hit-generation activities with the European Lead Factory has already been realised. Ton Rijnders, ELF Head of Screening: “In ELF, we have already witnessed SciLifeLab’s capacity to deliver many solid proposals now enrolled in our screening portfolio.”

Both parties believe cooperation in the framework of future European programmes may be mutually beneficial, especially given the common stakeholder communities involved and the overlap in terms of potential users. Rijnders said “We see SciLifeLab as a key to the inspired Swedish life science sector.” Olli Kallioniemi, director of SciLifeLab: “We look forward to finding opportunities for continued collaboration between ELF and SciLifeLab. We see that the capabilities of ELF could provide major new avenues for the SciLifeLab Drug Discovery and Development Platform to empower Swedish research in molecular biosciences.” Per I. Arvidsson, Director SciLifeLab Drug Discovery & Development, confirmed “Of what I’ve seen so far, I’m convinced ELF and its unique Joint European Compound Library will be great complement to our national drug discovery infrastructure.”

Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab), is the Swedish national centre for molecular biosciences with focus on health and environmental research. The centre is organized as a partnership between four host universities, namely Karolinska Institutet, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University and Uppsala University, and combines frontline technical expertise with advanced knowledge of translational medicine and molecular bioscience. All researchers active in Sweden can access and utilize both the technology and the expertise available at SciLifeLab. SciLifeLab is comprised of some 40 facilities organized into 10 technology platforms; one of these platforms, SciLifeLab Drug Discovery & Development, offers service for the development of new exploratory drugs – either as small molecules, new modalities, or protein-based therapeutics.

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The research leading to these results has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n' 115489, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 / 2007-2013) and EFPIA companies' in kind contribution.